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7 Crim. Behav. & Mental Health 3 (1997)

handle is hein.journals/cbmh7 and id is 1 raw text is: Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, 7, 3-11 1997 © Whurr Publishers Ltd Psychopaths: oversexed, overplayed but not over here? Psychopathy - or at least Hare's conceptualisation of the disorder (Hare, 1991) - is gaining currency in forensic practice within North America. The Psychopathy Checklist - Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991) is an integral part of a growing number of risk-assessment procedures including the Violence Risk Assessment Guide, the HCR-20 and the Spousal Assault Risk Assessment Guide (Borum, 1996; Kropp et al., 1994; Webster et al., 1994, 1995). In addi- tion, by administrative decree, the PCL-R is being used in assessments for conditional releases of those detained in federal prisons and forensic hospitals within Canada and the United States. In a recent meta-analytic study of the predictive validity of the PCL-R, Salekin et al. (1996) argued that the PCL-R is a good predictor of recidivism in general, and violent recidivism in particu- lar. They warned, however, that the generalisability of the PCL-R as a predic- tor beyond North American males has not been established. Given the salience of the concept in North American forensic practice, why is the concept used less frequently in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe? Is it because of differences in training and differences in the concep- tualisation of the condition, is it because the disorder is less prevalent or, per- haps, does the disorder take a different and less manifest form? Training and tradition may be pertinent. There is a long-standing clinical tradition, emanating from the United Kingdom, which questions the validity of the clinical construct of psychopathy. Blackburn (1988) famously described psychopathy as a 'mythical entity', whereas, more recently, Gunn (1996) has contended that the construct of 'psychopathy' is misleading. Gunn argued that the term psychopathy represents a reification of a disorder; he advocated that clinicians and researchers should focus their attention on specific affec- tive, interpersonal and behavioural characteristics of patients and not higher order constructs or syndromes such as psychopathy. Whilst there may be some merit in focusing on specific characteristics when managing the care of patients, such an approach is less likely to yield a clear understanding of the processes that create or maintain the difficulties experienced by patients. Syndromes in the sense of stable clusters of dysfunctional behaviours, affects and cognitions are likely to exist. Millon (1996) supports this view. He argued 3

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